Dutty Boukman

Dutty Boukman (died 7 November 1791) was a Haitian vodou priest and an early leader of the Haitian Revolution.

Biography
Dutty Boukman was born in Senegambia, West Africa, where he was a Muslim cleric before being transported as a slave to Jamaica and then to Haiti, where he became a Vodou houngan priest. He practiced a syncretic blend of Islam (from which his nickname "Boukman", related to "People of the Book", derives) and traditional African animism, and, on 14 August 1791, he prophesied that the slaves Jean-Francois Papillon, Biassou, and Jeannot would lead a revolution against the French colonizers of Saint-Domingue. The ceremony at Bois Caiman led to the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution, and, just a week after the ceremony, 1,800 plantations were destroyed and 1,000 slaveholders killed in a massive slave uprising. On 7 November 1791, he was killed by the French planters and colonial troops, and the French authorities publicly displayed Boukman's head to display his mortality.